I have done it all -- stayed at Disney -- drove over to Universal. Split stays and Disney and Universal. I cannot encourage everyone enough to go to Disney first then go to Universal and stay on site at one of the hotels with express pass privileges. You can get cheaper deals with cheaptickets.com for those hotels if you watch. It's so relaxing to go to Universal and basically walk onto rides after all the planning. The only thing that doesn't have express pass is the Harry Potter rides, and you can get in an hour early to do those -- in at least one park. Next year, we're going to do something different sort of. We're going to go to Disney, spend a couple of nights, do the Thrills tour and spend the majority of the time at Universal (DS 9 is way more into Universal now... sigh....). We're just trying to decide on hotel at Disney now (we usually stay at Shades of Green but may actually do a Disney hotel this time -- depends how many rewards points I have saved up by then).